I'm Still Alive
by Victoriousdoctor
Summary: He wakes up and he cannot remember where he is...just where is he? And how did he get here? An XMFC/Portal AU, spanning roughly the entire events of Portal 1 through Erik's eyes. No pairings.
1. Prologue

~ 13th September 1962

**Aperture Science Human Rights Violations**

It would seem that Aperture Science Research Laboratories, North America's leading pro-mutant scientific research corporation, has been working on some rather 'top-secret' research projects which has resulted in official investigations by the Human and Mutant Rights Committee (HMRC) into their affairs due to concerns of human rights violations. When questioned, CEO Erik Lehnsherr had no statement to give the press, however his business partner Charles Xavier did.

"I was fully unaware that the corporation was operating under the radar in these areas of research, but I am quite sure that these allegations of inhumane treatment will be sorted out."

While it appears that Charles Xavier did not have any understanding that Erik Lehnsherr was conducting illegal research involving the use of humans, his statement is made less water-tight by the fact that he is also being investigated by the United States Social and Ethical Business Practice Committee under similar charges as Erik Lehnsherr.

The charges against Aperture Science were founded after a complaint was sent in to the HMRC by Black Mesa, Aperture Science's main opposition in both research and their view on mutant rights, claiming that the facility was breaching several ethical regulations and conducting undisclosed research which had not been over-viewed by either the HMRC or the United States Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (USCSOC).

The investigation into the charges laid against Aperture Science is still pending, raising questions among mutant rights groups as to how the corporations bad publicity may end up negatively influencing the progress that the company has made in the areas of mutant rights and human-mutant relations.


	2. Enrichment Center

It was too bright.

He blinked against the glare that seemed to be coming from all directions, tried to raise a hand to give his eyes time to adjust. He could hear music. Something whooshed above him in the corner of his vision and suddenly cool air was seeping into where he lay. Disorientated, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. His vision slowly adjusted, and he blinked in dumb confusion at the sterile glass that boxed him in. He swung his legs off of the bed and onto the cold concrete. This action sent the room spinning wildly and he clenched his teeth to stop himself from retching. He took several deep breaths in through his nose and blinked rapidly to try and bring the world was back to a stand-still.

Outside of the glass directly opposite from where he sat he could discern a timer which was steadily counting down. Looking around he saw little to relive his confusion about where he was, the small glass chamber containing nothing else besides a toilet and a very small table upon which sat a mug, a clipboard and a very obnoxious radio.

He stood up slowly, fearing his legs might give way if he rushed himself. Taking two slow steps put him in the middle room, and he realised it was smaller than he had originally thought. Looking to his left he saw another display timer counting down above a panel of concrete. Perhaps it was some kind of way out?

He was just about explore that line of thought when he heard a strange beeping sound and then a metallic, computerised voice.

"Hello and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. We hope your brief detention in the Relaxation Vault has been a pleasant one."

Brief? Had he been here only a short time?

"Your specimen has been processed, and we are now ready to begin the test proper."

A test? Just what was going on?

"Before we start, however, keep in mind that although fun and learning are the primary goals of all Enrichment Center activities, serious injuries may occur."

What king of testing could involve serious injuries? And why was he…_how_ was he even here…how did he get here?!

"For your own safety and the safety of others, please refrain from-"

Suddenly the machine-like voice distorted and began spewing out a string of accelerating Spanish, and the light short-circuited above him. The glitch lasted only a couple of seconds, the light switching back on and the voice calmly…almost abruptly…announcing it's return.

"The portal will open in 3…2…1."

An orange ring of…light…had appeared on the concrete panel. It appeared to be a doorway of some kind.

Wait…he could see a person in front of him, in a room similar to his. He moved towards the man and saw him move also. Stopping, he noticed the man stop also. He turned his head to the right, and the man copied him again. The man was wearing the same orange jumpsuit as himself, in fact it appeared to be himself but…how? The apparently automated voice had called the orange halo a portal. A portal where? It looked like it lead out of the box. Stepping through, though with no small amount of caution, he found himself standing outside of the transparent room. It was a start.

He saw to his right a very large white rectangular display panel mounted on the wall, which contained two large zero's, a smaller counter which read "00/19" broken by a black border and two pictures. One depicted some sort of cylinder with an arrow pointing to square beneath it, and the other was a person who was getting hit by a square identical to that in the previous picture. He couldn't find any real context to the sign, and wandered away from its humming whiteness. He found, by walking around the entirety of the glass box that there was an oval doorway which lead to another room. As he entered, the doors slid shut behind him.

There was an overly large red button on the floor in front of him, and in the opposite corner of the room there was a cylindrical tube protruding from the ceiling. He strolled over to it, observing the strange dotted line leading from the button across the floor and up the wall to an 'X' next to another oval door. Suddenly the bottom of the tube slid back allowing a metal cube to fall to floor with a sharp clunk. When he approached the tube it must have triggered it.

The button looked like it was connected to the door by the line. He walked back to it and stood on it. The doors opened and the blue 'X' switched to a yellow tick symbol. He moved towards the door, but as soon as he took his foot off of the button it slid shut again.

It was a puzzle. Now that he understood what it was, he realised it was ridiculously simple. And he felt like an idiot. Walking over to the cube he picked it up, put it on the button so that it would stay activated, and walked out.

"Excellent. Please proceed into the chamberlock after completing each test."

He could see a strange blue field at the end of the hallway, and beyond it two more doors which looked like they were part of an elevator. As he drew closer to the field the doors slid open.

"First, however, note the incandescent particle field across the exit."

That must be the field. He walked through it and didn't feel anything. Mentally shrugging he continued into the elevator as the recording continued.

"This Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill will vaporise any unauthorised equipment that passes through it - for instance, the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube."

The elevator was rather noisy, whining as it moved upwards. He was pretty sure it was upwards.

He tried to get a sense of whether he was moving up or down but couldn't really tell. Even the movement of the the light reflected on the door didn't point one way or another if he thought about it.

He was so confused. How did he get here? Why was he here?

He tried thinking back before he woke up…

And realised he couldn't remember anything. Anything. His name, where he was born, what year it was, his mother, father, family, pets, job…

His first memory was waking up a few moments ago.


	3. Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device

The doors slid open.

He stepped out of the elevator and walked down the short corridor, stopping to briefly examine the white lit sign again as it hummed to life. It was devoid of any kind of information this time, only stating that it was the first chamber. He continued on and made the small leap down into the room, activating the pre-recorded voice again.

"Please place the Weighted Storage Cube on the Fifteen Hundred Megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button."

Perhaps it was the shock and confusion of waking up in a strange place with no memory, perhaps the eerie lack of other people or perhaps even just the fact that he had no idea why he was even doing these tests but it was only then that he noticed his legs.

When he had jumped down, instead of landing with his feet flat on the floor, he had been forced to land on only the balls on his feet. He looked down and saw that attached at the back of his upper calf was a rather large electronic...implant of some kind...coming out of which was a black piece of metal that was curved so that the padded tip was under his heel. He rocked backwards on his feet experimentally and found that the metal was flexible and put virtually no pressure on his heels. It had also apparently taken a large amount of the strain he should have felt when he had jumped. It was almost as if the ledge had only been a few centimetres high, not a good meter or two. Twisting around to look at the implants more closely, he saw that they resembled a kind of spring/shock absorber. Well, if there were any more ledges he would certainly be prepared. It might come in handy at least.

He mentally shook himself. He just had to keep moving. If he found someone, he could ask them about why he had apparently had surgery to implant electronic springs into his legs but right now he needed to just anchor himself in the present moment.

It was then that he heard a soft whooshing and turned just in time to see the portal change from leading to a room with another button to a longer room at the end of which lay the exit. He decided to wait...perhaps it would-

Yes. The portal changed again after a few moments to a room which held a cube in it. He walked through quickly and back out, not pausing in his walking to ponder that on the other side of the portal it appeared blue rather than orange. He saw while he was waiting for the room with the button to appear again that it was another blue portal which kept moving around the room, answer the question of just _how_ the portal was able to change destinations. So...it was similar to a kind of doorway which had been stretched out, yet had nothing in between? Trying to rationalise how the portals worked made his head hurt, he would just have to push it down with the rising panic at his situation.

He needed to find some kind of way out, or at least find someone he could talk to and ask just why he was here, how long he had been here, and just what the blazes was going on.

He walked through when the portal changed to the room with the button and placed it atop it, earning him a word of approval from the recording, then stepped back, waited again and walked through the exit as it continued on.

"...quickly to the chamberlock, as the effects of prolonged exposure to the Button are not part of this test."

Was that supposed to be some kind of joke?

The doors of the elevator shut and it moved, up or down he frankly could care less, and when they slid open he immediately went out and look out of the long glass window over the next test chamber. There was a gun in the middle of the room, with arrows pointing at it to highlight its apparent importance, rotating in the middle of the room. At every right-angle rotation, it would shoot out a blue portal onto the wall. He also observed that when another blue portal was shot out, the previous one would disappear.

"You're doing very well! Please be advised that a noticeable taste of blood is not part of any test protocol but is an unintended side effect of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill, which may, in semi- rare cases, emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth."

This alarming speech over, the recording lapsed back into silence. Well, he hadn't had any issues with the Emancipation Grill before when he went through it, so he should be okay. But really, he had no idea.

He did notice the lack of the large white display as he walked onwards through another door. Perhaps he had already passed it.

He reached the bottom of the stairs in time to see a blue spiral shoot through a small square hole, creating a portal when coming into contact with the opposite wall. He walked through the blue portal and jumped down into the room (again, he felt no real pressure on his knees, it was a strange feeling – or lack of one) and walked towards the gun.

Was he supposed to take it? Grabbing it he lifted it and and was quite surprised to find it much lighter than it appeared, though it was a bit awkward to hold with one hand. He propped the end of the gun with his left and held it with his right by the handle at the base. It wasn't as difficult to hold as it first had been, it's deceptive light-weight making it quite easy to manoeuvre.

"Very good! You are now in possession of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. With it, you can create your own portals. These intra-dimensional gates have proven to be completely safe. The Device, however, has not."

The lilting voice-recording then recited rules about how the device should be handled. Although just before it could finish it faded again and cut to static before turning off completely.

It came back though almost immediately. A fault in the recording perhaps? Brief technical issues?

"Please proceed to the chamberlock. Mind the gap."

He saw the white bright display again, with it's large black "03". And next to it was a camera hanging from the roof. He stared at it for a moment before turning away. The idea that somewhere someone was just sitting there watching him made him irrationally angry. Were there other people in other rooms? Or was he the only one here? He had just assumed he was alone, because of the recording. Why have a recording if there were people watching? But visa versa, why have cameras with a recording?

Regarding the room he saw that there was no way to walk across the gap. Ah! He aimed the gun at the wall and squeezed the handle. He was correct in guessing that the handle was the trigger, as it a blue portal shot out and appeared on the wall. He was faced for a second with the disconcerting view of watching himself go through the portal and then faced the exit. Again, there was no way across. Aiming the portal at the wall near the exit, he fired another portal and then stepped through again. He had done it. He was praised again by the recording when he entered the lift.

"Well done! Remember: The Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is the perfect time to have her tested."

...right. Tested. Was that what was happening? He was being _tested_. Like...like some kind of intelligence test based on how well you could solve puzzles? Maybe even a form of rehabilitation because of his memory loss?

The alternative was not an appealing idea.


	4. Assumptions

"Welcome to test chamber four. You're doing _quite_ well."

This time the white display panel had the two pictures that he had seen in the first puzzle. There were other pictures as well, but they were weren't illuminated, so he figured they wouldn't be relevant in this room.

Continuing on, he walked around a narrow wall of glass sitting directly in front of a button, and into the main section of the chamber. A quick survey of the puzzle was all that was needed to figure it out. He was supposed to get a cube out of the bottom of a pit over in the right-hand side of the room and place it on the button in order to open the exit. It wasn't difficult, and the jump down was again made easy by the implants. Not really a challenge, although he wasn't sure how he was going to carry both the portal gun _and_ the cube at the same time. The cube was heavy enough by itself when carried with both hands, and he could hardly carry it with just one.

He let go of the portal gun with his left hand and lowered it to his side, when it suddenly made a soft whining sound. Propping it back up again, he twisted it around to see if something was wrong with it. It whined again, though only for a brief moment while it had been pointed at the cube. Experimentally, he aimed the gun at the cube and pressed the trigger button. The claw-like pieces of metal at the end of the gun expanded slightly outwards, the center segment lengthened and a strange web of static electricity formed as it locked onto the cube. Raising the portal gun, he lifted the lifted the cube into the air with practically no effort at all.

Wherever he was and however he had gotten here, this technology was _amazing_.

Solving the puzzle took very little effort after that, though he did have to put the cube back down to fire a portal onto the wall to get out of the pit.

"Once again, excellent work. As part of a required test protocol, we will not monitor the next test chamber. You will be entirely on your own. Good luck."

On his own? Well…at least they wouldn't be watching him, perhaps he could take the opportunity to try and find some way out.

This time when the lift doors opened, he marched straight out and around the corner, totally ignoring the display when it turned on (although he did make note that it was supposed to be the 5th room) and walked to the exit. He would just have to try anything and everything to try and get out. He searched for any kind of switch or manual way of opening the exit doors. He considered trying to force them open, but he couldn't find any ridge or hand-hold to grab onto to try. Glancing around the room he tried to find something…anything…that he could use to get out that didn't involving him solving the puzzle.

There was a glass room to his left…a kind of observation room? But it was empty, and he could only see a few chairs and perhaps a table through the window. The were two raised platforms in opposite corners of the room, and he went to stand on the metal grating underneath them. He bent down and gave them a sharp tug, but they were firmly set and wouldn't budge. He rubbed his face frustratedly and sighed. Wait…perhaps?

No. He had walked back to the lift, but it most definitely closed. And even if he _could_ somehow force the doors open, he didn't know how to control it and there were no buttons inside. He wouldn't be able to go anywhere. He wandered back into the main room out of ideas and exasperated.

What if he just…didn't do the test? If he just sat there and did nothing? If they weren't monitoring the chamber, then they wouldn't know. But they would be waiting for him to finish it, and would know he wasn't doing anything. Maybe if he waited long enough someone would come and check on him. No…that wasn't a good idea. He could be waiting for hours. They might even make him wait days out of spite.

Fine. He would just do their puzzles and play their game. For now, there was just no other way. But the first person he saw was going to have hell to pay.

The chamber was straightforward enough, though it was noticeably more complex than the previous ones. He had to get two cubes to weigh down two buttons this time, one cube was at the bottom of another pit and other one was on one of the raised platforms. A portal was on the opposite platform to the cube. He would have to use a portal to both get out the pit and get the second cube. It wasn't hard. Fire a portal onto the wall, step through it, then fire another across the room on the wall above the other platform and step through again. Voila, one cube. Getting he other one took only a few seconds. Jump down, fire another portal, pick up the cube, walk through and place it on the other button.

It was easy…really, really easy. Why would someone do this? To test new company equipment? But why had he been asleep? Was he a type of live-in inventions tester? No, that's stupid, surely people didn't do that.

It just didn't make any _sense_.

All of the confusion he had first felt was quickly becoming anger. He felt angry at having to do the tests, to be sure, but he also felt anger at not being able to remember anything. If he knew who he was, could remember his identity, he could at least draw on those memories. He had no idea if there even was anyone else here. He hadn't heard anyone, seen anybody. For all he knew he was the last human on the whole planet. Maybe they were all dead. Maybe he was in some underground bunker somewhere and a virus had wiped out everything like some B-grade Hollywood film.

Maybe it was aliens. Maybe all of those stupid conspiracy theorists were right and the aliens which had just been waiting to probe every red-neck and homeless gutter-dweller finally came and took everyone.

He snorted derisively. It's not like it mattered.

He had been pacing furiously around the room, refusing to walk through the exit in an act of stubborn defiance, but now he just gave up and turned towards it. This time, however, there was no lift and no apparent way out. It was only a small, square room with another one of those radio's sitting in the middle of it. He still walked inside though, the annoyingly jaunty music filling the entire space. Another recording began as soon as he entered though, which subdued the music somewhat.

"As part of a required test protocol, our previous statement suggesting that we would not monitor this chamber was an outright fabrication."

He scoffed in disbelief. He probably should have seen it coming, though.

"Good job! As part of a required test protocol, we will stop enhancing the truth in three…two…"

Again, the recording cut to static at the end of the sentence before turning off. How convenient. In fact, it was very convenient. That recording was quite glitchy. Yes…in fact, you could almost _count_ on it to malfunction at crucial moments…like telling you important safety advice.

For the first time since he had woken up. he felt a sense of unease. And once it was there, it wouldn't be shaken so easily. Even when he fired the portal, went through and walked down the short corridor to the lift (after a briefly disorientating fall upside-down because the portal had been on the ceiling. Luckily, the implants righted themselves of their own volition and he landed on his feet rather than his face), he couldn't get rid of the feeling that there was something…not necessarily wrong, but off slightly.

Not that there was anything 'right' about his situation, but he had had to make massive assumptions based on nothing to even begin to _comprehend_ the position he had found himself in. He assumed he wasn't the only person here. He assumed the recording was supposed to guide him through the tests. He assumed someone would come for him after he was done. He assumed he was here voluntarily, or at least he had agreed to do the tests.

He could be dead wrong, but right now there was no real proof either way.


	5. Safety is our Highest Priority

When the elevator doors opened at the next chamber, he received quite a surprise.

The entire chamber was covered in dark grey-brown tiles. The floor and ceiling was still concrete, but the tiles created quite a different atmosphere from the white bareness of the previous chambers, the raised surface of each tile creating an unusual effect not unlike a padded room, though the tiles were arranged in rows of various size, which broke up some of the uniformity.

The buzzing display informed him it was the 6th chamber. It also had two new pictures visible, one of a person getting hit by a circle…a ball of some kind?…and one of a circle with an arrow indicating it had to go in a type of machine. Again, there wasn't much context, but from previous experience it would probably make sense once he went fully into the room. He had also begun to notice that the pictures were repeated on the floor in front of the different objects they were related to, which was helpful as it made identifying each object easier.

He could hear a soft "vhweet" sound coming every couple of seconds from the chamber and turned away from the display to look around. As per usual, the recording was triggered by his entry into the chamber.

"While safety is one of many Enrichment Center goals, the Aperture Science High Energy Pellet, seen to the left of the chamber, can and has caused permanent disabilities, such as vaporisation."

Yes, that's quite a disability.

"Please be careful."

Whoever recorded this certainly had a propensity for being quite nonchalant about serious injury.

It would appear that the energy pellet was required to be directed into a receptor on the ground. The receptor was connected to a platform via a dotted line which was sitting at the exit, situated a good meter and a half above the floor.

A beam of orange light…the same colour as the energy pellet…was being projected out of the receptor and onto the ceiling. The pellet was still ricocheting back and forth off of the closed orange portal on the floor and the piece of machinery on the ceiling which had released it. He looked more closely at it and saw it was getting noticeably more transparent each time it ricocheted until finally it vanished with a puff. Another pellet was dispatched however, so at least he didn't have to worry about running out of time.

Using the orange circle of light on the ceiling as a target, he fired a portal on the ceiling. The energy pellet ambled through the now open orange portal, out of the blue and made its way into the receptor. As soon as the pellet activated the receptor, the recording was activated and the platform began to lower to ground level.

"Unbelievable! You, (Subject Name Here), must be the pride of (Subject Hometown Here)."

He didn't really know how to take that. First of all, ignoring the fact that the sentence ended up sounding mockingly sarcastic because it had not been a challenging puzzle by any means, it was also painfully generalised.

If he had ever had some kind of opportunity to learn something about himself, thus far that would have been it. Although at least it told him that he probably wasn't the first one who had been through here. Why else would you need to say something like that? And maybe a good deal of people, if they couldn't even be bothered to record each individual's name in.

He stepped onto the platform, not bothering to wait until it was at the top fully before walking off it and into the lift to go to the next chamber. The building he was in must be quite tall if each test chamber was on a different floor and there were supposed to be 19 of them.

This time the short entrance to the chamber had stairs which lead down into the room. He glanced around for the white display panel, the recording already beginning.

"Warning devices are required on all mobile equipment. However, alarms and flashing hazard lights have been found to agitate the high energy pellet, and have therefore been disabled for your safety."

How ironic.

The display was virtually the same as the one in the previous chamber, the only difference being that a "07" replaced the "06". Also, the black progression line was a bit longer. One more chamber closer to the end.

There was another energy pellet bouncing back and forth across the room. He quickly fired a portal onto the wall where it should normally ricochet off and it travelled through and out of the orange portal on the floor below the receptor.

"Good. Now use the Aperture Science Unstationary Scaffold to reach the chamberlock."

The receptor had been connected to a docked platform. When the pellet had entered the receptor it had activated the platform and it was now moving slowly along a beam of light (the science was far beyond him) with a deep thrumming sound. He fired a portal directly above the platform.

For the first time, however, a portal didn't appear. He had attempted to place a portal on the grey-brown tiles which covered the opposite wall and ceiling, but it had just…exploded into sparks for lack of a better description. So the tiles would not hold a portal then. He saw then that there was a square of concrete at the far right-hand corner of the ceiling. He fired a portal onto it, walked over to the orange portal on the ground and waited. When the platform was below the portal he jumped down onto it.

He then had to wait until the platform moved back to the other end of the room before he could jump off, go through the ever present emancipation grill and into the lift.

The technology of the place was amazing, he'd give them that.

When the lift-doors opened, he consulted the display for some kind of hint about the chamber. Again, there were two new pictures (they seemed to come in two's often). One was of a person drowning and the other was an indication that drinking was either banned or not advised. What?

Walking into the room, the pictures instantly made sense. The whole room was filled with a disgusting looking brown liquid. Luckily, he was on a platform well clear of it. There was another platform diagonally to his left a few meters away which had a portal on the wall above it, and on the right-hand wall in about the middle of the chamber there was an unstationary scaffold which was connected to a energy pellet receptor.

"Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an 'unsatisfactory' mark on your official testing record…followed by death. Good luck!"

Oh yes death would be quite an unsatisfactory outcome.

He narrowed his eyes skeptically. So much for "safety is one of many Enrichment Center goals". Was the person recording this just making up the rules as they went along?

In any case, chamber "07" ended up requiring some actual brain work to solve. After a few failed attempts, he had figured out how the energy pellet was supposed to enter the receptor in order to activate the unstationary scaffold. He had to fire a portal on the wall in the path of the pellet, then when it went through he had to fire another portal across from the receptor before the pellet went back through the orange portal. It required quick acting and had been the first puzzle that he had failed on the first try. It made him strangely glad, though. He found he enjoyed figuring out the puzzles when they actually required him to think. It would even have been fun in normal circumstances.

He fired a portal on the wall near him and stepped through, then fired another across the room above the unstationary scaffold and walked backwards onto it (though he timed it wrong and had to wait for it to come back). It slowly made it's way to the end of the room, he got off and it was back into the lift, the recording starting up as soon as he was inside.

"Very impressive. Please note that any appearance of danger is merely a device to enhance your testing experience."

Somehow he wasn't so sure about that.


	6. Momentous Pessimism

Uniformity and whiteness met him once again when the doors opening.

The grey-brown anti-portal tiles had provided a nice reprieve from the panelled concrete, but the return to a semblance of normalcy was…nice.

The short entry into chamber 09 was dark, the display on the wall bright in the dimness. There was only a cube dispenser in this chamber apparently, and he went into the room.

"The Enrichment Center regrets to inform you that this next test is impossible. Make no attempt to solve it."

Somehow, based on the previous test chambers, he highly doubted it was _impossible_. Perhaps it might just take less than a minute to solve. The recording continued to play.

"The Enrichment Center apologizes for this clearly broken test chamber."

The room was divided into two sections. The first, where he was standing, held a raised platform to his left, then a cube dispenser in a little corner of the wall on the right-hand side. A wall of grey-brown tiles (so they hadn't vanished after all) and an emancipation grill cut through the middle of the room, the other side of which contained a button connected to the exit.

"Once again, the Enrichment Center offers its most sincere apologies on the occasion of this unsolvable test environment."

He remembered that you weren't supposed to be able to take objects through the grill, so he didn't bother trying. Besides, that would be far too easy.

"Frankly, this chamber was a mistake. If we were you, we would quit now."

He looked back up at the platform. Yes…there was an orange portal there. Hmm.

"No one will blame you for giving up. In fact, quitting at this point is a perfectly reasonable response."

He could use it to get up there with the cube…but then what? Firing a portal, he then picked up the cube and stepped through onto the platform. Now what-

Oh…there was a square hole in the grey-brown tiles above the emancipation grill. He could fire a portal through there and then step through the orange one to get through to the next room.

"Quit now and cake will be served immediately."

That recording was starting to wear on his nerves. Before it hardly talked at all, now it wouldn't shut up.

Placing the cube on the button once he was through the portal, he wondered what had been recorded on the event of actually finishing the supposedly 'broken' test chamber.

"Fantastic! You remained resolute and resourceful in an atmosphere of extreme pessimism."

He chuckled softly…really?

Though, he thought as he entered the lift, he really shouldn't have expected anything else. At least it could provide some amusement. Perhaps that's why it was there, as a form of comic relief. Because it wasn't really a good guide, though it did provide a measure of assistance, he'd give it that much. Whoever had recorded those messages must have had fun. Although it was at his expense.

The next room was slightly different this time, the entry to the chamber being at the top of some stairs which stopped about halfway down, and were therefore inaccessible. The display had two new pictures: One of a person falling going into a portal, and another of a what must be the same person flying out of one. Hopefully the recording would shed some light on chamber "10".

"Hello again. To re-iterate…"

The recording suddenly slowed down, the voice becoming distorted and garbled. It abruptly sped up again, fluctuating and crackling constantly so that in the end he could only pick out a few words from the incomprehensible gibberish, before it finally turned off altogether.

"…previous warning…momentum."

Well. He turned and saw an orange portal appear on a panel of concrete that was extended out from the wall behind him. He fired a portal on the ground in front of him and jumped through. He was propelled out of the portal, and it had been placed high enough to allow him to just make it to the bottom of the stairs, and continued on through the entrance to the main part of the room.

The door slid shut behind him as soon as he was through. This room was entirely covered in the grey-brown tiles, save the floor of a pit in the middle of the room. The two pictures from the room were on the floor at the edge of the pit. Momentum, huh?

He heard the unique sound of a portal opening. He looked behind him and saw that there was another extended panel with an orange portal. Ah, he knew what he was supposed to do.

He turned back to the pit and fired a portal onto the concrete at the bottom, then jumped. He went through and then found himself flying through the air and across to the other side of the pit, the heelsprings more than compensating for the pressure from the fall.

"Spectacular. You appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does _not_."

So that was what this chamber was about then? Using portals to propel yourself.

And, going into the next room, he saw the previous two rooms had just been a warm-up. He spied the exit across a gap above him, and could hear the sound of a portal open and then of something hydraulic moving. He spun around in time to see the panels that made up the wall above the exit extending outwards, creating a 'T' shape when fully outstretched.

He went to look down into the pit and saw that there was actually a stair case that wound around the walls and down to the bottom, the floor of which consisted of only grating, giving the impression that the pit was bottomless and that you might fall down into the strange orange-haze. Luckily for him, it wasn't.

There was an orange portal on a panel of concrete sitting in the middle of the pit, which explained the noise he had heard earlier. There was nothing for it but to fire a portal up onto the extended panels of concrete and jump.

"Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms: Speedy-thing goes in, speedy-thing comes out."

This information would probably been more helpful at the beginning of the test chamber, not halfway through it.

He couldn't reach the exit though, he had been propelled onto the ledge below it. It was at this moment that the top part of the extended 'T' began to move outwards even further, creating a long rectangular concrete wall above him. He fired a portal onto it and walked to the ledge that was above the pit.

It was a decent drop down. He breathed in and out to steady himself, and then stepped off.

There was a dizzying moment when he went through the portal and ended up suddenly upside-down. He instinctively tucked his head down, inadvertently flipping the rest of his body as he did so. At this point he could only see a blur, and landed square on the ground, the heelsprings pushing him upright as soon as he landed to try to stop him falling backwards. His arms cartwheeled as he tried to regain some sense of balance, his vision was spinning.

As the world slowed, he realised he was facing the blue portal he had placed on the outstretched platform. Taking deep breaths to try and calm his pulse, he turned back towards the exit, and walked into the waiting lift.


	7. Dual Portal Device

Stairs were the first thing he could see when the doors whooshed open.

From the entryway he could discern a faint mechanical whirring, followed by a sound similar to an electrical device powering and then the distinctive sound of a portal opening. The sequence of sounds reminded him of the room where he found the portal gun. Was there another one?

Moving forward and ascending the stairs, he entered a wide viewing room with a terraced floor leading to long large windows overlooking the main test chamber. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, a display flickering as it turned on.

"The Enrichment Center promises to always provide a safe testing environment. In dangerous testing environments, the Enrichment Center promises to always provide useful advice."

…he would like to know their definition of useful. Though, the recorded advice was _somewhat_ helpful. Occasionally.

"For instance, the floor here will kill you - try to avoid it."

He shook his head incredulously. The abruptness the voice-recorder used in pointing out the obvious lent a certain dark humour to whatever was said. Helpful advice indeed.

He stepped closer to the windows and peered out at the room below. The room was filled with water, with the exception of a small cube-shaped island holding a portal gun that was rotating and firing portals onto the walls - just like he had predicted.

An unstationary scaffold was sitting next to it, and on the wall directly opposite he could see a door that was connected to something by a blue dotted line, but from where he was standing he couldn't see what. He didn't bother pressing closer to the window to try and get a better look at what activated the door. He figured he might as well just enter the room and find out.

Glancing back around the room he realised, however, that there was actually no exit.

Thank goodness for portal guns.

He fired a portal onto a wall (he figured it didn't really matter where) and went to walk through, but halted sharply when he realized the portal on the wall was three meters from the island, and there was no way of getting there. The portal gun was charging up however, and when it fired the blue portal closed momentarily before opening again at a different location. This time it was a small open-ended room, so he went through quickly before the portal gun turned and fired another one.

There was a small button seated on top of a tall cylindrical stand. The dotted line he had seen previously connected to the stands' base. So that's where it went. Just to make sure he was correct in assuming the door was connected to the button, he pressed it experimentally. The button beeped as it activated and entire line became yellow as the door on the opposite wall opened, just as he thought. Although he suspected that the door was on a timer because there was a loud 'tick tick' sound after he did so. He could see through the door and the long windows on the wall that a high energy pellet was travelling back and forth in the room.

At that moment the button buzzed and the door lowered again, having timed out.

He was beginning to get an idea of what he would have to do. The energy pellet would need to go into it's receptor, which was on the wall directly to the left of the portal gun. If he could get a portal onto the wall in the path of the pellet, then when the portal opposite the receptor re-opened it would be able to float straight into it and activate the receptor.

Pressing the button again, he fired a portal through the open door and onto the wall. The orange portal was on the wall opposite him, so he had to wait for the portal gun to make two 90 degree rotations before it fired the portal onto the wall behind him.

Turning back, he went through and into the room where the pellet was ricocheting to and fro, and fired a portal onto the scorch mark where it had impacted against the wall. He stood the side and watched as the pellet travelled through the portal, across the room, and into the receptor.

The portal gun then fired a portal onto the wall in the open-ended room, so acting quickly he walked through and then fired a portal onto the wall above the now activated unstationary scaffold and walked back through and onto the platform.

The platform took him to the island in the center of the room. Even with the lack of arrows pointing to the portal gun, he knew he was supposed to take it. He wasn't really sure what to do with the one he had now, so in the end he traded the one on the stand for the one in his hands. This must have been the correct thing to do, because as soon as he had put the old portal gun onto it, it began lowering down into the ground before disappearing into the island completely.

"This device has been modified so that it can manufacture two linked portals at once. As part of an optional test protocol, we are pleased to present an amusing fact: The device is now more valuable than the organs and combined incomes of everyone in (Subject Hometown Here)."

So now he could control _exactly_ where the portals were placed. That would come in handy, and he wouldn't have to wait around anymore. He felt around the trigger for the gun, and realized that it was quite a bit different to the previous. The handle that had previously acted as the trigger was now replaced with two thick metal rings and a moulded hand-hold. The rings were connected to wires which disappeared further into the portal gun. He slid his index and middle fingers into the rings and shifted his hand until it fit smoothly against the hand-hold.

Aiming at the wall, he pulled back the first ring with his index finger, then aimed to the right slightly and pulled the second with his middle. A blue portal shot out onto the wall first, and then an orange one beside it. The first ring was for blue portals, and the second for orange ones. He wasn't quite sure how to pick things up yet, but he could cross that bridge when he came to it.

A button had risen out of the island where he was standing. For the first time, he noticed that the exit had been located on the wall in front of him. Pressing the button, he fired an orange portal onto the wall as soon as the door opened, and then turned around to look for the platform. It was a good distance away, travelling away from him and to the wall, so he placed a blue portal onto the wall in front of the platform and waited for it to come back. Again.

He didn't bother to wait until it had reached the wall fully. Taking a step back, he took a running leap through the portal and landed solidly on the ground in the little room behind the exit door. The lift, protected by the emancipation grill, was to his left.

The short break in-between chambers was becoming a pleasant break, allowing him to just stop and think. Maybe he couldn't find any answers to his questions just yet, but when he completed the last test chamber, something would have to give.


	8. Faulty Wiring

The entryway into the next chamber was an interesting amalgamation of white and brown, the upper half being the white concrete panels, and the bottom being the dark grey-brown tiles on which portals could not be placed. He wasn't sure whether this was part of the test, or simply because it looked aesthetically pleasing, but he kept in mind that he could place portals there just in case.

The brightly lit screen read chamber "12", warned him that somewhere in the room there was a cube that would need to be placed on a button and he would also be jumping off more ledges.

Spying a flight of stairs leading down onto a lower level, he walked over to the ledge to peer down. It was at that moment the recording started up again. He could hardly understand it though. The words were a garbled mess, cutting out and freezing, and even what he _could_ hear made little sense.

Fling yourself into…space?

He thought that's what it had said. He stared pensively at the wall and began to wonder whether he should even bother paying attention to the recording any more. Half the time it didn't even work properly and the other half it spouted out bizarre statements which were confusing and contradictory. He could understand that someone doing these tests might need some humour, and the recordings bluntness in the face of dangerous situations was somewhat amusing, but there is a big difference between a person who fully understands what is happening and someone who does not. Perhaps that was all it was there for, to just be a distraction from the silence and provide comedic relief.

If it was there to give advice, then someone needed to be fired.

He shook his head and turned his mind back to the task at hand. There was a row of white extended panels far above the bottom of the pit, and he knew he could use it to portal up to the second story.

Placing one portal on the panels, he jumped off the ledge and placed another on the ground below him, and was propelled through onto the second level platform.

On the wall in front of him there was a white picture with two black dots. It was most likely indicating that he was on the second level.

Turning back around he saw that the panels holding the portal were directly in front of him, and that there was another row of panels above him. He repeated almost exactly what he had done before, the only exception being a much longer fall. The increased momentum propelled him so far out of the portal he was almost flung against the wall on the other side of the room, and had to quickly throw his hands out to catch himself before he slammed into it. He had also almost tripped over a button on the floor, but luckily he had been far enough away from the ground that he had missed it.

Pushing off of the wall, he saw on of the panels on the row above him move slightly outwards, and then tilt upwards, so that it was facing the roof at a 45 degree angle. Looking across the room he saw that the third and final level was quite a bit further than the others had been. There was a cube dispenser on the ceiling in the left-hand corner and the exit on the wall on the right-hand side, a dotted blue line snaking its way down to connect with the button beside him.

He could get the cube from the fourth level, and simply place it on the button. Not that difficult.

Placing a portal on the tilted panel, he went to jump down into the portal way down at the bottom of the pit, then realised that he probably couldn't jump far enough out the making it past the platform below him. So he stepped off onto the lower platform, and from there jumped down. It worked all the same, and he found himself flung all the way over to the fourth platform, right next to a cube already waiting for him.

He went to pick up the cube, and remembered that he didn't actually know how to. He had forgotten that the controls of this portal gun were different. He pointed the gun at the cube, and it made the same soft whining sound as before. He felt around the inside of the portal gun with his right hand, but he couldn't feel any kind of obvious button or trigger. He tried pulling the metal rings, but they didn't do anything either, except attempt to fire portals at the cube, which didn't work of course.

It was after a good 15 minutes of playing around with the gun that he discovered that the two metal rings could be twisted to the left at the same time. He tried doing so while the gun was pointed at the cube, and it locked onto it like it had previously done.

Why couldn't they have recorded some instructions on how to use the Portal gun instead of giving 'helpful' advice? Though…it was possible that people were debriefed on how to use it before they entered the first chamber. Each person probably had already been shown how to use both versions of the gun, himself included, and he just couldn't remember. At least the two guns had been built in a fairly straightforward way, even if it took him a bit of time to learn how to use them again.

He raised the gun, and by extension the cube, and moved back towards the edge of the platform. He was pretty confident that he could jump far enough to reach the third level. He took a step back, and then leaped from the platform onto the one below him.

Finishing the test took only a matter of minutes after that. The exit doors had opened as soon as the cube activated the button, so the only thing left to do was jump back through the portal to get back the fourth level.

As soon as his feet hit the ground, the recording activated with it's customary 'beep'.

"Wheeeeee-"

A sudden garble of harsh static filled the air and the lights short-circuited again. It lasted only a moment, but it certainly couldn't be a good thing that the building's electricity was so faulty. And he was more inclined to believe it _was_ technical issues, because it hadn't been only the recording that had malfunctioned.

He wandered absentmindedly into the lift. Perhaps the building was so faulty because it was in its early stages? That could explain why people were being used to test the equipment, trying to work out the things that didn't work so they could be fixed later.

Though, that recording…he was beginning to doubt the sanity of whoever had been behind the microphone.


	9. Preconceptions

His first thought upon entering test chamber "13" was that it was decidedly small. In fact, it looked far too small to be a puzzle this far into testing.

Gazing up towards the exit door, he saw that under it was a wide glass window that looked over another, much larger testing area. The small room must just be a starting area or something. It only contained a button on the ground that was connected to the exit, and a cube on a wire-mesh platform above him.

And of course a display panel, which said that the room was number "13" and contained a cube (which he had already found) and an energy pellet dispenser/receptor somewhere as well. That must be in the second part of the chamber.

The recording started up again, apparently back to normal.

"Now that you are in control of both portals, this next test could take a very…_very_ long time. If you become light-headed from thirst, feel free to pass out. An intubation associate will be dispatched to revive you with peptic salve and adrenaline."

Perhaps normal wasn't the correct word. Fully functioning was more appropriate.

It was becoming more and more clear that, despite their constant assurances otherwise, there was a careless disregard for the safety of the people who had to do the tests. Most of the testing equipment was dangerous, if not lethal, if not handled correctly. And telling people that it was okay to pass out from dehydration, because they could simply be revived again? It didn't really show much concern over their employee's welfare.

It also raised the question of whether he was alone or not again. In this instance, it didn't seem so. But he really didn't know. It just went around and around in circles, each unanswered question leading to more and more and more. It would help if he knew just one concrete fact. Then he could build on that.

He sighed, frustrated at his memory loss, and fired a portal beside the cube which was sitting on the platform and then another on the wall in front of him. Going through, he picked up the cube and dropped it down onto the button. The doors opened, and he jumped down from the ledge and into the next part of the chamber.

This section contained two platforms on the left hand side of the room. Both of them had a large button sitting on them which were connected to the exit, but the furthest platform was half the height of the closest one. A high energy pellet was moving across the room next to the platforms, every few seconds bouncing off of the wall with a soft 'vhweet'. The receptor for the pellet was on the ground in the middle of the room, and was connected to an unstationary scaffold which took up the entire wall on the right side of the room. A second cube was also sitting on the unstationary scaffold platform.

He stood there for a moment, breaking down the puzzle into parts.

First, he could start by getting the pellet into the receiver. He put one portal onto the wall where there was the scorch mark from the pellet, and then the other onto the roof above the receptor.

After the pellet activated the receptor, the unstationary scaffold thrummed to life. The ceiling above the platform was mainly the grey-brown tiles, with there being a strip of concrete in the middle. He fired a portal onto the concrete, and then another onto the wall nearby and waited until the platform travelled back under the portal.

As soon as it was below him, he jumped down, swinging his legs up so that his body would be the right way up when he landed. It worked, and he landed feet-first on the platform. Twisting the rings with his fingers, he lifted the cube into the air and walked off of the platform onto the floor.

Getting the cube onto one of the buttons wasn't a problem. But he realized he would need the other cube to weigh down the second one.

The doors to the smaller area were still open, so he fired a portal through the doors and onto the ceiling, and went back into the room. He stared at the cube sitting on the button, trying to think of how he could get it into the other room. He couldn't take it off, because then the doors would close.

Oh, of course! Why had it taken him this long to figure it out?

He glanced back at the portal on the roof of the second chamber, and seeing it was blue, placed an orange on the wall in front of him and picked up the cube. The doors closed, but it didn't matter because he could still get to the second section by going through the portal. Then, it was only a matter of putting the cube on the second button.

With both of the buttons being weighed down, the exit doors opened. The exit itself, however, was situated in the middle of the wall instead of on ground level, and there were no stairs, only a wire-mesh platform in front of the exit.

The walls of the corridor inside the doors, however, could hold portals. So just placed a portal inside the corridor and one in front of himself and went through. He wondered briefly if the puzzles would get much harder, as he walked towards the lift. So far they hadn't been too bad. The recording didn't activate until he stepped through the lift doors.

"As part of a previously mentioned required test protocol, we can no longer lie to you. When the testing is over, you will be…_missed_."

He swore he practically hear the smile that would have been on the voice recorders face. This place was disturbing, and not just because he had woken up with no memory and no clue of what he was doing there, though that was off-putting in itself. At first he had decided to simply give everything the benefit of the doubt, but there was no more denying that something was very very wrong. It couldn't just be passed off as a coincidence or simply ignored anymore. Well, he would make sure to be on his guard from now on, instead of simply dismissing things until he could figure them out later.

Exiting the lift as soon as the doors opened again, he walked down the short entry corridor in search of the display panel. The next chamber looked like it would be quite a bit more involved, the majority of pictures on the white display being illuminated. In fact, only three were unlit, one being the one of the cube dispenser in the chamber, and two others that hadn't been used yet. Upon walking into the chamber itself however, he realized he had been underestimating the size of the place. The chamber was narrow but quite long, stretching out far and high to the left. The right-hand end of the chamber was also a good 15 meters away, though the roof was much lower and there were no portal surfaces except for the floor.

It was also the first test chamber which didn't conform to a square-shaped room. He had been picturing in his minds eye that the building…or whatever he was in…was around the same size as each test chamber, because each one had been relatively the same shape and size. But now, it seemed like it could be much bigger than he had thought. And if this was only the 14th test chamber, the others would probably be larger and more complicated.

The recording activated while he was still staring at the far away chamber wall.

"All subjects intending to handle high-energy gamma leaking portal technology must be informed that they may be informed of applicable regulatory compliance issues."

What? His brow furrowed in disbelief. Were they actually saying that he had to be informed that he _could be_ informed about something?

"No further compliance information is required or will be provided, and you are an _excellent_ test subject."

These people were the most confusing and contradictory that he'd ever come across! Well, he couldn't remember if they were, but that's not the point. And what had they said about leaking portal technology? For goodness sake, were there _any_ kind of health and safety precautions in place?

In the end chamber 14 was not as difficult as it had first appeared. There had been a door behind him which was connected to a button on the floor. But the cube which needed to go on the button was sitting on a ledge made out of anti-portal tiles, all the way at the _other_ end of the chamber, and up a flight of stairs that activated only when approached from the bottom. So he had had to place a portal on the wall directly across form the cube, and then use the ledge where the stairs had appeared from so that his momentum from jumping down could propel him across the short distance onto the platform.

There had also been a high-energy pellet receptor in the area where the cube had been, which had been connected to a platform lift back near the entrance to the chamber. After he had placed the cube on the button and opened the door on the right-end of the chamber, he had discovered that it lead to a new section of the chamber. He had walked through the short windy corridor, and had been faced with a pit of sludge, which had two moving platforms hovering up and down above the muck, and one stationary island in the middle.

He had decided to go across the easy way, and simply fired a portal onto the wall at the end of the hall, and skipping the mini gauntlet. And as soon as he went through, he had found the pellet floating back and forth in the small room.

However, after placing a portal onto the wall where the pellet would hit, he figured out that he wouldn't be able to cheat again because the portal had to stay where it was. It didn't him take particularly long to get across, but he ended up forgetting which colour portal he had placed where the high-energy pellet was and had to do the whole thing again. He paid more attention the second time around, and learnt that the circular light in the middle of the gun changed colour depending on what colour portal had just been fired. The information would probably be useful later on.

And then the last thing that had been required was to fire the correct colour portal above the pellet receptor, and walk back to the platform lift.

"Very, very good. A complimentary victory lift has been activated in the main chamber."

He snorted in amusement. A victory lift, eh? What a kind gesture, he thought has he walked towards the lift, and stepped on.

The elevator was waiting for him behind an emancipation grill at the top of the lift. They were perhaps the two constant things in this whole blasted place. The doors shut behind him when he had walked through, and the elevator began moving to the next test chamber.


	10. Cake and Grief Counselling

**A/N: Remember when I was posting chapters twice a week? Sorry, not going to happen anymore. I'll be posting something more along the lines of once every few weeks now, as the holidays are drawing to a close. Thought I'd let you know :)**

* * *

The entry corridor roof was quite low this time, and he had to resist the urge to duck his head as he walked out of the elevator towards the currently black display panel on the wall in front of him.

As he drew closer to the display it lit up, helpfully informing him that chamber "15" involved high energy pellets, momentum and more toxic water. He also noted that there were only 4 more chambers after he finished this one. He smiled to himself grimly. He wouldn't have to wait for answers too much longer.

He skirted around the display and entered the chamber, the recording beeping as it turned on.

"The Enrichment Center is committed to the well being of all participants."

Ha!

"Cake and grief counselling will be available at the conclusion of your tests. Thank you for helping us help you help us all."

Cake and grief counselling. What an odd mix. Well, at least they were going to give him something to eat after this was all over.

The chamber he was in was again reasonably tall, but not quite so long. There was a wall-to-wall pane of glass dividing the room in half, a huge emancipation grill sitting above it that spread across the middle of the chamber , and an exit on the wall behind it. Having not really paid much attention to the emancipation grill before, he didn't really know what to do. He knew it didn't allow objects from test chambers, such as cubes, to pass through it, but there weren't any cubes in this room.

Not really sure what he was supposed to do, he aimed the gun at the wall behind the emancipation grill, and fired. The portal, however, didn't make it onto the wall. As soon as it came into contact with the emancipation grill, it fizzled out and disappeared. He tried once more, just to make sure, but the same thing happened again.

Then there had to be something else. He turned back towards the entrance, searching around the room with his eyes, when he spotted a concrete panel sticking out from the wall high up near the roof. Ahh, perhaps he could propel himself over the glass?

Placing one portal onto the panel and another onto the ground in front of him, he jumped through. He landed short of the emancipation grill though, in fact he barely made it across the room. He would need more force, which meant that he would have to go through the portal twice.

He tried again, and this time when he was falling towards the floor, he made sure to quickly place a blue portal (the one on the panel was orange) on the ground in front of him. He missed, however, and hit the ground just short of it.

The third time was a charm, and he sailed clear over the emancipation grill, the other half of the room, and landed straight in the exit entryway. His momentum from the jump almost carried him into the wall too, but there was just enough room for him to jog to a stop before hitting it.

Not bothering to catch his breath, he went around the corner and into the next part of the chamber.

This section also used the emancipation grill as part of the puzzle. The left half of the chamber was bare, the right half being divided into two smaller sections, with an emancipation grill across both.

There was a high-energy pellet dispenser in the left-hand compartment, and a pellet was travelling across the room. It passed back and forth through the grill with no visible change, so perhaps not all testing equipment was affected by it. In the right-hand compartment was the receptor for the pellet, sitting on the floor.

He had to get the pellet into the receiver. Normally, he would just put one portal on the wall where the pellet would travel, and the other on the wall above the receiver. But he couldn't fire portals through the grill, and when he tried walking through it, the portal he had just placed on the wall behind him disappeared. It just...deactivated.

So he walked back out again and stood there thinking. Again, he wasn't quite sure what to do. For lack of a better plan, he placed a portal on the wall in the path of the pellet, and then other in front of the right-hand compartment. Now the pellet was travelling back and forwards between both sections. He followed it into the right-hand section, but remembered too late that going through the emancipation grill would deactivate the portals. He turned around and, sure enough, the portals were no longer there.

A way of solving the puzzle might be to get the high-energy pellet into the room with the receptor, and then direct it down into it using portals. But the only way to do it would be to wait until it was travelling back and forth between the right-hand compartment. It should work. He couldn't see why not.

He repeated what he had done previously, but this time when the pellet went through the portal, he went through the emancipation grill and into the right-hand section. It bounced off the wall in front of him, and he placed a portal where it had impacted, and another on the roof above the receptor. When the pellet made it's way back, it went in one portal, and out the other straight into the receptor.

A platform lift was waiting on the ground for him, the exit being near where the entrance was. It raised him up to another corridor, which lead to yet another section of chamber 15.

This was taking much longer than he had anticipated.

The corridor lead into another tall room, much like the first section he had come across, with the glass panel and the enormous emancipation grill. It also had the extended panel, and he preemptively placed a portal onto it. The floor however, on closer inspection, was mostly made out of the dark anti-portal tiles. He was pretty sure that simply jumping through a portal on the ground wouldn't carry him the distance he needed to reach the white concrete tiles which didn't begin until about 3 meters away from the glass panel

There must be something else. And sure enough, there was. Near the entrance, there was a very inconspicuous doorway which contained a stair-way that lead to a small ledge. Hmmm, he would probably have to use this. Glancing at the portal gun to see which colour portal he needed, he placed a blue portal onto the ground and jumped through.

He wasn't quite prepared the first time, and fired the blue portal on the ground too far in front of himself. And he failed the second time too, landing on the ground just short of the portal. And the trek back to the small room with the ledge became very tedious _very_ quickly.

It took him four tries before he finally made it through the portal and over the emancipation grill, the relief of success feeling almost as good as the exhilaration of flying through the air.

The area that he landed in was in itself a puzzle, a high-energy pellet receiver and dispenser sitting side by side on the wall to his left, and another extended panel on the wall high above them. Using that he could travel over yet another wall-to-wall grill and into the third and final part of the room, which was currently to his right. The three different sections ended up forming an L-shaped room, with the second area joining the two together.

The floor in the second area was completely made out of concrete, so it was much easier to repeat what he had just done, and travel over the grill into the third area. Directly in front of him there were two panels which had been both angled at 45 degrees, the left one facing left, and the right facing right. The high-energy pellet, travelling between the 2nd and 3rd sections, bounced off of the left panel, onto the wall on the left, ricocheted back towards the panel and then rebounded straight back the way it had come...all in the matter of a few seconds.

He would have somehow get the pellet to travel in a straight line into the receptor. He tried placing a portal on both of the panels, but that had the same effect as before, the pellet simply bouncing off of the opposite wall and travelling back again. He needed it to come out off the wall and bounce off of the panel.

Placing one portal on the left panel, he tried placing the other on the wall opposite the right panel. This time the pellet ricocheted off of the panel and headed in a straight line right into the receptor.

Now, all he had to do was put a portal high up on the wall, one on the ground, and jump through twice and he was home free.

Or at least he had thought he would be, but standing in the exit doorway, was one last challenge.

Instead of a nice brief passageway that would lead to the exit lift, the corridor had no floor and was full of the polluted water. An unstationary scaffold was moving slowly along a beam of light which travelled down the length of the corridor and disappeared into the left hand wall right next to the entrance.

Right. Well.

Firing a portal on the wall opposite him and another on the wall next to the exit, he waited until another unstationary scaffold appeared came into view and then stepped through the portal, quickly firing another (an orange one this time, the one behind him had been blue) onto the wall further down the corridor, and stepping back through the one behind him just in time to land on another unstationary scaffold. Glancing to his right he saw that he had been wrong in his assumption that test chamber 15 had come to an end, and quickly fired another portal into the room. He had waited too long this time however, and had to travel the full distance back into the previous chamber, which took a while as the unstationary scaffold moved fairly slowly.

Glancing down at his portal gun to check the colour of the last portal, he fired a blue on onto the wall and stepped through into the next, and hopefully _last_, part of test chamber 15.

The room was rather confusing, containing a high-energy pellet dispenser on the roof with a pellet bouncing back and forth between the ceiling and the ground. There were also two lifts that lowered to the ground upon his entry into the room, on to his left and on further along wall near the right-hand corner of the room, and a third in the far left corner which remained raised. Then, directly opposite where he was standing, was a sliding door.

He figured he probably wouldn't be able to solve the puzzle by staying on the ground, and walked over to the lift on his left. As soon as he stood on it, it began rising until he had reached the very top, stopping at the entrance to a small room which overlooked the test chamber. Walking through, he saw that the room was entirely empty with the exception of a small button, which was situated in front of the wide glass window that allowed him to see out of the room. Glancing out of the room, he saw that a high-energy pellet receiver was sitting behind the door. Meaning that he would need to open the door and direct the pellet into it.

He pressed the button, and the sliding door opened for a few of seconds before closing, revealing that there was another door behind it that would need to be opened. The second lift most likely lead to another small room with a button that would open the second door. But he would need to press both buttons as quickly as possible if he wanted them both to open at the same time.

Walking back to the entrance of the room, he realised that he could fire a portal into the other room at the other side of the test chamber, so he placed on on the wall behind him and then fired another across the chamber and into the room with the other button. Turning around, he went back to the button and pressed it, then ran through the portal to the second room and pressed the second button. With both of the doors opened, he could get the pellet through. Moving to stand at the entrance of the room, he fired a portal onto the ground underneath the pellet dispenser, and then another on the wall opposite the receptor.

The pellet travelled across the room, and it looked like it was going to make it to the receptor in time, but the doors closed just a fraction too early and the pellet bounced off and began travelling haphazardly around the room before finally puffing out. So he replaced the portals that had been connecting the two rooms together and tried again, trying to move faster and place the portals down on the ground and wall as quickly as he could. But still, the doors closed just a fraction too early.

Frustrated, he paused to think. If he could reduce the amount of space he had to move to reach the buttons he could add some seconds onto how long both the doors were open at the same time. And, he thought, if he could time when he placed the portals so that the pellet was already travelling towards the ground, that would also save him time.

Trying again, he placed the first portal directly in front of the button, and the second portal he fired into the second room on the wall as near the other button as he could manage. He also tried waiting until the pellet looked like it would be travelling towards the ground. Again, he had the same result, the pellet ricocheting off of the very edge of the door and flying through the room.

He kept at it, doggedly refusing to give up, until finally the pellet made it through the doors and into the receptor. The third lift, which had remained raised during the test, now lowered to the ground. Breathing a sigh in relief and triumph, he jumped down into the main chamber area, the recording activating the moment the pellet entered the receiver.

"Did you know, you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science self esteem fund for girls? It's true!"

Tempting, but no. He'd have to pass on that, he thought as he walked over and stepped on the exit lift. Besides, how was donating _all _of his organs to a fund for girls going to help raise their self-esteem? Save quite a few lives, yes. But raise their self-esteem? Really?

The lift moved slowly, just like everything seemed to in this place (with the exception of the elevator at the end of each test chamber), but it did eventually reach the top. Shaking his head at the unconventional methods used, he walked to straight through the emancipation grill to the elevator, the doors shutting and the elevator whining as it travelling to test chamber 16.


End file.
